Maintaining a clean and healthy environment when trying to breed your pet birds is very important to assure your young birds grow and fledge successfully. Your young birds will live out the weeks of their first development entirely within their nest boxes and so an effective cleaning regime is a must to ensure good development.
Over the course of time until they fledge and leave the confines and security of their nest box nursery your young pet birds will obviously do everything within that nest box, including going to the toilet. This itself is the main cause of contamination within the nest box confines.
Bird faeces will, if not cleaned up, dry out to form a hard crust that is very difficult to remove with any degree of success. This can and undoubtedly will cause health issues with regards to your pet birds offspring, so it is imperative that you keep up a good cleaning regime within this environment.
You must check your nest boxes regularly and inspect them accordingly. How often you do this is down to you but I feel that a check once every two days is a good ratio, this will make sure that disturbance is kept down to a minimum whilst still maintaining a high degree of maintenance.
Firstly you should check any young birds and satisfy yourself that they are growing well and building their strength. Most popular pet birds require minimal maintenance to keep them fit and healthy. However a big problem with young birds in nest boxes is the amount of faeces that gets stuck in their claws and feet, and dries up into a crust on the internal surfaces of the box.
To clean the interior of the nest box you should if possible remove it from its normal position (I suggest when first putting out your nest boxes you fit them in a way that allows easy removal for inspection and cleaning purposes), remove the young from within and place them somewhere safe (I use a cardboard box) so you can get in and clean.
If your box has a removable concave insert (recommended) then remove this and scrape off any dried faeces with a suitable DIY scraper (a wallpaper scraper is ideal), then put it to soak in warm water (no detergents please) for a few minutes to loosen what's left. In the meantime scrape any dried faeces of the interior surfaces and then give them a good scrub with warm water (again no detergents) and a scrubbing brush or scourer, then shake off any excess water and dry with absorbent kitchen towel.
Now remove the concave insert from soak and scrub that also, and again shake off any excess and dry with absorbent kitchen roll then return it to the nest box when dry. I use absorbent kitchen towel as I think it is the most effective way to soak up any dampness.
Now it's the chicks turn; to remove any dried faeces from their feet and claws you should try to soak each foot and claw individually in luke warm or tepid clean and detergent free water. Hold the chick in your hand with one foot inserted into the water, try not to get any other part of the chick wet, only its foot; soak for a minute or two - soaking in water will help to dampen and loosen any faeces that has become attached to the foot - then carefully ease the now moistened faeces from the foot and claw.
Be very careful and gentle when doing this so as not to harm or injure the young pet bird; although they are generally tough and resilient applying too much force or pressure will injure them.
Pat the now clean foot and claws with absorbent kitchen towel to dry.
Next you need to repeat the process with the other foot and then with any other chicks until all of them are done and then return them to the nest box before returning it to its normal place.
Be sure to do only one clutch and one nest box at a time so as not to get your young birds mixed up.
Article By Pete Etheridge
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